According to the Mayo Clinic (and every other authority for that matter), there has been an upswing in coronary disease over the last 20 years. In fact, a recent study found clogged arteries in young adults, age 16 on up – suggesting heart disease doesn't only affect men and women in their 50s and 60s. The latest findings mark the first shift since the mid-1960s, when a decline in heart disease began.

Most people fear they are having a heart attack when they experience chest pain. There's good news and bad news. The good news is, not all chest pain comes from the heart. The causes can range from merely being inconvenient , like a muscle ache , to the more serious like heart burn, as the oesophagus ( the "foodpipe") runs behind the heart. Some can even be life-threatening, like a blood clot in the lungs.

ALL that glitters is not gold and every chest pain is not a heart attack. It is not rare to see patients having chest pain panicking and living under the fear of death due to heart attack even when the cause of the pain is not in the heart but elsewhere. It is important to know the various causes of pain that may resemble cardiac pain so that this situation is avoided.

Let's say it's 8.15 pm and you're driving back home (alone of course), after a hectic work on the job. You're really tired, and frustrated. Suddenly you start experiencing severe pain in your chest that starts to radiate out into your arm and up into your jaw. You are only five kilometers away from the nearest hospital. Unfortunately you don't know if you'll be able to make it that far. You may have been trained in CPR, but the guy that taught the course did not tell you how to perform it on yourself.